Seaweed
by Ca3n
Summary: An assortment of random, weird scenes.
1. Seaweed

_Have some madness my brain concocted! Yeah, I don't really know what this is supposed to be either. But it was fun to write, so I do hope it will be fun to read as well._

 _This takes place in the same universe as "5 Tasks For Pansy", but you really don't need that to understand this, I was just too lazy to come up with something new._

 _Might post more tidbits like this one in this story later._

 **-o0o-**

The door's hinges gave a slight metallic click that announced Harry's arrival. Blaise, Draco, Pansy and Hermione - who was still trying in vain to pluck the last scraps of seaweed out of her hair - froze immediately. So did Harry when he came face to face with yet another reason to ban them all from ever entering his house again. He did not scream, to his credit. He just bit his lip and waited until Hermione cleared her throat nervously.

"It was his idea! He questioned my judgement. So I had to" she said pointing at Draco who was having trouble concealing his laughter. "I'm sorry" she added after a moment.

Harry's kitchen had been turned into a giant, dry aquarium. It looked as though they had done their best to cover every available surface with either seaweed, gravel or fake coral. Magic projections of various tropical fish flitted around his cupboards, and he thought behind the table he saw what might have been the fin of a shark. Someone had glued bits of inidentifiable transparent material to all the lamps, their blue tint making the room look pretty much like it had been flooded.

He took a very, very slow breath, closed his eyes and reminded himself that murder was a felony that could land him in Azkaban.

In. Out. Breathe, Harry. You can do this.

"Listen. I do not want to know why you did this. You have an hour, then I will walk into my kitchen, make myself a sandwich and not see as much as a shred of evidence that this ever happened to my house."

He shot them a warning look and slammed the door behind him.

"Worth it." Said Draco.

"Totally worth it."

 **-o0o-**

 **-2 hours earlier-**

Hermione had been halfway through her new book - a very interesting discussion of the merits of sticking charms in construction work - when the floo flared up. She looked up in time to see Draco Malfoy, covered in soot, stumble through, followed by Blaise Zabini, their demeanor suggesting Draco's imbalance had been his doing.

They spotted her and she closed her book with a resigned sigh as the two approached.

It'd be hours before she'd know why Helga Hufflepuff had been against fortifying Hogwarts' walls with sticking charms.

"Hermione! We were just looking for you."

Draco came to stand beside him, obviously not thrilled to be included in the whole 'looking for you' thing.

"Blaise here is of the opinion that real aquariums are more interesting than magical ones. Which is stupid, frankly. Why would you want to be able to _smell_ a seal? Besides-"

Smell a seal? There was a story there. Before she got the chance to ask however, Blaise cut in.

"Noone said anything about a bloody seal, Draco! We're talking fish here! And fish are obviously way more interesting if they actually displace water! So Hermione-"

"Displace water? Magically projected fish don't even _need_ water! Or food! Or to shit! Fish shit, Blaise! Projected ones do not! Why would you not want-"

"Merlin Draco, _everything_ shits! You shit! That's not even an argument! And on a different note, how would you even know real fish from fake fish exactly? And how do _you_ of all people know it's not more work to construct and maintain an illusion of that quality? Or do you have any hidden talents you'd like to share with us?"

Hermione was very close to opening her book again then.

"That's got to be the worst argument so far - if _I_ don't know, how would _you_ Blaise? Or are you perhaps one of those people who develop emotional attatchments to his swimming fillets?"

"To be honest, I doubt setting up a fake aquarium would be more work intensive tha-"

She was rudely interrupted by Blaise shouting "HA!" and Draco exclaiming "You traitor!" and she decided even _trying_ to finish her sentence would be a waste of her time. Time she could spend reading. Sigh.

"If it's so easy, then why don't you convince me by building one!"

And that was it. She was hustled into the kitchen - Harry's kitchen, she reminded them and was ignored - and ordered to set to work. What a great use of her time. _Sigh_.

Pansy poked her head in as Hermione was distributing her interpretation of a corral reef on the tiles. After a profanity laced question about the current state of the room, she took a seat on one of the already arranged corals.

Hermione had to admit, this was fairly difficult. But still easier than the real thing.

It took them almost two hours to create their giant aquascape and when Harry walked in on the admittedly rather embarrassingly childish project, they were distributing tiny bubbles in the air for a finishing touch.

 **-o0o-**

The door slammed closed behind her friend and Hermione sighed again.

"Worth it." Said Draco. She thought about slapping him.

"Totally worth it."

She slapped him.


	2. Trying on Clothes

Hermione was completing her routine preparation for a sigh when her girlfriend quickly clasped a hand over her mouth. She considered biting her finger, but knew that Pansy would do that annoying thing she loved to do and call Hermione's attemts of getting rid of her cute.

Hermione was not cute, mind you. She was very, very not cute. She was brave and fierce, and could hide her fear of lifts so well nobody had ever noticed.

"Shh, Hermione, this is for your own good!" With that she thankfully removed the offending hand, but, instead of leaving her girlfriend to be grumpy in piece, she opted to set hands on her shoulders and try to spin her around.

Hermione watched her reflection resist the forced twirl and decided that she _did_ like this skirt. It was a dark blue, had something she would describe as an in-built belt and was currently proving that inertia was a scientific idea with real world applications.

"Hm, I like the A-line skirt on you, but I think you could use a lighter colour...", she mused, then seemed to register that Hermione was still in the room.

"Do you like it?"

"Well", she felt like a jellyfish out of the water. How does one respond to such a question when one has almost no grasp on what an A-line skirt even is? 'Fake it 'till you make it' seemed like a good start for now.

"I like the... A-line, but yes, the colour could be different." Did it work?

It did. Pansy nodded, apparently willingly ignoring her victim's distress, and ducked back into the shop to find a skirt to match the description. Hermione allowed herself a sigh.

She didn't even want to be here. Hell, she didn't even want a skirt! And she especially didn't want to go to that formal purgatory of a birthday party. It had taken a day of boycotting clothes to persuade Pansy to let her wear a blouse and skirt in stead of a dress. Which had reduced Draco to a giggling mess and made Blaise's eyes grow to the size of saucers. Ron had opened the door to the living room with a smile in place, had frozen and then slowly walked backwards, shutting the door, the smile still on his reddening face. It had been quite amusing.

A thing she hadn't been able to talk Pansy out of were the heels she was to wear. They were to be at least four inches high, which, to Hermione, had not sounded too impossibly high. Until she'd tried a pair and promptly planted her face on the carpeted floor of the shoe store. She was used to low heels, the heels of her favourite pair of fancy foot wear were a mere one inch.

She was made to learn walking in progressively higher heels after that, and was now proud to say that she could walk the length of the garden in Pansy's shoes without intimately examining the grass. Which didn't mean that she enjoyed it.

The curtain parted and Pansy emerged with what had to be at least a dozen almost identical skirts draped over one arm.

"Here we go! I brought you everything from mauve to navy blue", she pulled a skirt out of the stack that looked marginally different, "and also one draped skirt in your size, because I thought you might like those."

Hermione smiled as she made to try them on - this might take a while, and the party most _definitely_ wouldn't be worth it. But she knew Pansy's expression when she'd finally be satisfied with Hermione's outfit would be.


	3. 'The Bag'

Draco almost trips over something in the dark and yelps.

"Are you ok?", Harry asks, sitting up in alert, one hand already grasping for the wand under his pillow, the other coming up to his nose in a small but persistent nervous gesture and dropping again when there's no glasses to push up.

"Yeah just, tripped over... a bag?"

Harry cringes. He knows at once what Draco has tripped over, and he really does not want to face the other's reaction.

"Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it in the morning", Harry says and prays that Draco doesn't press the issue.

He doesn't, thank Morgana, but he does hesitate slightly before he pads back over to the couch that is his temporary bed and doesn't mention it further.

Harry exhales slowly and lies back down. He focuses on the soft breathing of another person in the room and tries to ease himself back into sleep.

He needs someone's breathing with him in the room to sleep now; after the year he'd spent camping with Ron and Hermione he couldn't rest without the reassurance of it. If he woke up to silence his thoughts would, without fail, immediately race back to that year, and his body would tense with the paralyzing fear that came with the thought of being the only one left alive.

So when Hermione and Pansy were on vacation and Ron had been called away on auror business on short notice, he'd found himself in quite a pinch. The house was emty now, but he desperately needed _someone_ , and quick.

Harry had not slept for almost a week before his exhaustion won out and he woke up to a nervous breakdown bad enough to make him swallow his pride and floo to Malfoy Mannor to ask for help.

And now here the Malfoy heir was, spending his nights on Harry's uncomfortable couch, the only reason the boy who lived could sleep at all.

He could not put into words how grateful he was to him, and yet, he knew he'd give anything to keep Draco from discovering the contents of the douffle bag he'd stumbled upon. The bag, you see, was the one he always kept stocked with fresh potions and everything he might need should something force him to flee on short notice. He was too much of a coward to talk about 'the bag', as Hermione, the only person who knew about his shameful habit, called the issue, and especially to talk about it with Draco. First the sleep thing, now this would really make the pity palpable.

He might have been a Gryffindor, but the war had beaten a lot of the reckless bravery right out of him.


	4. Running, Running, Running

**A/N: This is a snapshot of an AU that popped into my head, so here's what's happening: Voldemort won by slowly turning the Ministry into his tool from within, murdering dissidents along the way. At some point he puts up wards to control his subjects DDR-style, and Percy has the misfortune of being trapped withing the 'Mauer', so to speak.**

* * *

Percy shifts nervously on the rickety stool. Two minutes to go; two minutes until the wards reset, providing him with just enough time to apparate away. Two minutes, and it'll be life and death. Still two minutes to change his mind. Two minutes, and he could still decide not to go. But then, he can't not do it, can he. Not really.

Because if he's honest, it's death or just the hint of a slim chance of survival. Either he goes now, or never. Tik, tok. One minute.

He's ridiculously lucky to have disavowed his family when he did, otherwise he would have never learned how the anti-apparition wards on Britain work. Or rather, he'd be dead already without a doubt.

He stands abruptly, readies himself to apparate. One hand clamps around his wand, the other around the strap of the leather satchel that now holds his entire life, and he takes a final, steadying breath.

Then the clock strikes twelve. Echoing gongs wash through the silence of the empty house, but Percy doesn't stick around long enough to even hear the first one end.

As he turns on the spot, his head is suddenly ringing as he shreds through layers of wards, the breath is knocked out of him and then his eyes open to a blurry street. The second Percy's feet hit the cobblestones he is running. Running with all his might, running for his life. The anti-apparition wards being down doesn't mean the detection wards are, too.

The air around him is filled with pops and shouts as the Aurors struggle to catch him, but he doesn't hear any of it – Percy's ears are filled with the deafening rushing of blood and wind. His feet beat down on the pavement in growing intervals, he's running, running, running, like it's a fox chase, the hounds after him.

His glasses are knocked askew, but he can't think to straighten them as he whips around corner after corner into progressively narrowing streets, gasping desperately for breath. His lungs are screaming at him as he gulps down air like a dying fish, but he keeps on running, running, for his life, running, with all he is.

He whips around another corner, almost slipping when a person shoots out from an alleyway and grips his arm tightly. To a chorus of shouts behind him, they vanish into thin air.

And Percy is tired, and exhausted, and throwing up, and barely able to breathe at all, but they can't get to him here, he's safe - at least for now - and he's made it, he's _made it_ , that he can tell by the floor he's vomiting on.


	5. Thunderstorms and ancient gods

A warning, this is _very_ short, and it doesen't really make a lot of sense, either. But it's something? I guess. Uni's kicking my arse and I have no inspiration left... But yeah, Luna is a nice perspective to write from. :)

~o0o~

When Luna wakes up there's little sun filtering through her thin curtains. There's a growling in the air like a disgruntled god and her skin is alive with the buzz of rain. She doesn't crawl out from under her blankets the second she's aware of her limbs like she usually would – moments like this one are a rare gift to be treasured. She lays there for what feels like eternity, her every blink a shutter click, a click captures the world around her and reduces it to a comprehensible facet of what is really there. Click. Click, and the world is still there, but maybe she isn't. Or is it the other way around?

Her eyes close and it feels a little like sinking into a pool of warm water. She's gone, but only for a second, before her mind reminds itself that it exists, and her eyes open again. She's barely awake, and neither is the sky outside. She can't see it, of course, but it's the kind of thing you feel in your bones. And Luna's bones are heavy, they way her down and keep her safe out of sight of the storm overhead.

Her muscles hum along with the thunder. Run, it growls. It's a warning she never has liked to heed. If you bend, they've got you. If you admit you are powerless, you are. Because the heavy clouds, and the scorned gods, and the steady rains, you cannot hope to sway them but by taking them on headfirst.

How would they ever respect you if you yielded? In front of the gods you are only as powerful as you profess you are. Click.

She falls back asleep.


End file.
